January 17, 2009

Another salvo in the economic restructuring of news, print and otherwise. It is possible to be a strong advocate for online forms of journalism and still recognize that what is going on right now in the newspaper business, and in journalism in general, is a travesty.

Lasica points out precisely why that is, and what we could lose if this continues, a loss that should be fought by everyone who cares about the role of a free press in society. I've followed his writings for years, and am thankful he is jumping in on this debate too. I just had to pull out his strongest points, to make sure they hit home.

If newspapers disappear, will it matter?

By J.D. Lasica

Author and marketer extraordinaire Seth Godin has a provocative new post: When newspapers are gone, what will you miss?

As
regular readers know, I worked in print newsrooms for the better part
of 20 years before transitioning to the online medium, and I've been
harsh in my criticism of news organizations for not embracing the
digital medium faster and smarter. But I can't agree with Seth's bottom
line, and here's why:

Comics are even better online, and I don't think we'll run out of those.

We
won't run out of comics, but we will run out of the most talented
comics, who will choose to do something else rather than draw for an
audience of thousands rather than millions, especially when they'll
have to do it for free rather than as a career.

[...]

But the truth is that the flash and trash of dumbed-down coverage is
what we're already getting in spades on the Web, and it's not fair to
lump the hundreds and thousands of quality, solidly reported local
stories and dozens of in-depth pieces, national stories and
investigative reports with the fluffy stories that make all of this go
down easier.

Punchline: if we really care about the investigation and the
analysis, we'll pay for it one way or another. Maybe it's a public
good, a non profit function. Maybe a philanthropist puts up money for
prizes. Maybe the Woodward and Bernstein of 2017 make so much money
from breaking a story that it leads to a whole new generation of
journalists.

The reality is that this sort of journalism is relatively cheap
(compared to everything else the newspaper had to do in order to bring
it to us.)

Here's
where I think Seth's argument is seriously off-base. The reality is
that this kind of public-interest journalism has never been supported
by the public. The investigative reporting and in-depth reports
produced in the modern era (from Edward R. Murrow's Harvest of Shame
reports right up to modern coverage) have been loss leaders for news
networks and newspapers, which is why they have been the first thing
cut in recent years as media consolidation works in favor of
shareholders' returns rather than the public interest.

We won't pay for it, because we never have.

[HEAR HEAR! All I hear these days are "non-profit models" for "real" journalism, and foundations this and foundations that. Respected people are all of a sudden advocating this non-profit model like it is the salvation of journalism, just because NPR has successfully harnessed its periodic beg-fests into a serious revenue stream. BUT NPR IS ACTUALLY GOOD AND UNIQUE AND A TREASURE. And the percentage that a non-profit sector can contribute to the overall boots-on-the-ground journalistic enterprise is really probably less than 10% of even today's vastly scaled-back and lay-off driven "reporters in the field" force.

Many advocates for restructuring in the field are suggesting things such as the entire L.A. market can be adequately covered by 35 people tops, and that that somehow is a kind of "new reality" of journalism, and we should just take this medicine and we should like it, and not be utterly outraged at what it would mean for coverage.

I am not implying that those who embrace the restructuring speak with identical voices, advocate the same things, or even advocate this specific thing. They are just the leading voices for this structural revisioning of journalism that to me seems like a lot of rationalization of things I can't stomach, especially in terms of its ramifications for what the public will get to know about the functioning of its biggest institutions. The disappearance of the already disappearing watchdog. That is my lament. I don't disagree that certain interactive structures and content distribution channels are changing drastically, and largely to get lagging old media in line with the new media forms.

I just don't see why this means an 80% reduction in the total set of reporter eyeballs in the field.

That, to me, is not economic restructuring. That is a political pogrom under the guise of economic restructuring, to specifically REMOVE reporter eyeballs from the field. Somebody, a whole lot of somebodies, specifically wants a greater cloak of darkness over activities that affect our civil society and the public good.

The people who glibly embrace this restructuring of the field strike me as making the same kinds of arguments that were made in the Reagan years, when the U.S. manufacturing base vaporized from our so-called "Rust Belt."

At the time, it was treated like an economic imperative, like a structural economic change, like economic determinism. But now, years later, with all the regrets of our current, fluff-driven "service economy" and "financial economy" and "consumer economy," I want to look back to that movement, and the assumptions of University of Chicago "free trade" and globalism advocates and say, "Almost all of their basic assumptions, under which the U.S. manufacturing base was deliberately sacrificed, have been completely and fully disproven, and we are all right now paying the price in this economic collapse for the idiotic short-sightedness of it."

And I would make an almost identical argument about the sacrifice of family farms and the rural landscape to government policies that literally made industrial agriculture, one of the biggest travesties ever visited on the U.S. landscape, appear to be some kind of "inevitability." Michael Pollan and others have exposed this policy-driven social engineering of farming to be just as short-sighted, and not a structural shift at all. It was policy-based outcome, not a market-driven outcome.

And now people want to make the same sort of arguments about the enterprise of journalism, when the vitality of this enterprise, from the yellow press and earlier, has always generated revenue, has always fed a thirsty demand when the stories were REAL and affected PEOPLE'S LIVES, and the revenues really only started declining sharply when monopolies and public corporations started dominating the entire communications enterprise, interestingly enough, with the claim that audiences are no longer interested enough in stories that are REAL and affect THEIR LIVES.

Like with Pravda, that's what some entities appear to want you to think. I think there IS a declining audience for the self-censored stories that fit into the current narrow definition of journalistic content that is subsidized by publicly-traded corporations and fits their definition of "acceptable." Like they say, money talks, and bullshit walks. I think there's been a gradual adjustment of our news thermostat, the exchange of ideas, and audiences, perhaps not consciously, react to being fed a steady diet of fluff while being told it is meat.

But back to the great and important points Lasica is also calling BS on (not in so many words).]

Nor
is it cheap. Investigative and enterprise reporting are the most
expensive forms of journalism in almost any newsroom, column inch for
column inch, because the projects require weeks or months of sustained
reporting and result in a single splash or a short-lived series.

Ask
any journalist who's done in-depth or investigative reporting about
budget cuts, and the kinds of stories that are going uncovered, and
you'll get an earful, I promise you. And this doesn't even take into
account the closing of foreign news bureaus.

[EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Read that last paragraph again. Memorize it.]

[...]

But the truth is that the flash and trash of dumbed-down coverage is
what we're already getting in spades on the Web, and it's not fair to
lump the hundreds and thousands of quality, solidly reported local
stories and dozens of in-depth pieces, national stories and
investigative reports with the fluffy stories that make all of this go
down easier.

Punchline: if we really care about the investigation and the
analysis, we'll pay for it one way or another. Maybe it's a public
good, a non profit function. Maybe a philanthropist puts up money for
prizes. Maybe the Woodward and Bernstein of 2017 make so much money
from breaking a story that it leads to a whole new generation of
journalists.

The reality is that this sort of journalism is relatively cheap
(compared to everything else the newspaper had to do in order to bring
it to us.)

Here's
where I think Seth's argument is seriously off-base.

[Dude, you are being way too kind. How could anybody involved in the communications business think that part of journalism is relatively cheap? Corporate chain ventures have been trying to find ways to cut costs all over, and this is the FIRST thing cut, because it actually takes experience, and critical thinking, and brains, and a massive legal department, and oh yeah, legal GUTS to back up your people. I could go on and on. Automaton journalism, assembly line wire copy rewrites, this is NOT.]

The reality is
that this kind of public-interest journalism has never been supported
by the public. The investigative reporting and in-depth reports
produced in the modern era (from Edward R. Murrow's Harvest of Shame reports right up to modern coverage) have been loss leaders for news
networks and newspapers, which is why they have been the first thing
cut in recent years as media consolidation works in favor of
shareholders' returns rather than the public interest.

We won't pay for it, because we never have.

Nor
is it cheap. Investigative and enterprise reporting are the most
expensive forms of journalism in almost any newsroom, column inch for
column inch, because the projects require weeks or months of sustained
reporting and result in a single splash or a short-lived series.

Ask
any journalist who's done in-depth or investigative reporting about
budget cuts, and the kinds of stories that are going uncovered, and
you'll get an earful, I promise you. And this doesn't even take into
account the closing of foreign news bureaus.

I will give a witness. But thankfully, Lasica has said it far better than I could, so I won't blather on any further.

The web has excelled at breaking the world into the tiniest independent parts. We don't use this to support that
online. Things support themselves. The food blog isn't a loss leader
for the gardening blog. They're separate, usually run by separate
people or organizations.

This part of the economic model does need examining. The idea of loss leaders, of subsidizing good and important things with frivolous and unrelated things. I think the basic concept itself will be lost in the Long Tail. People should not have to conned into paying for something they don't want. Like loss leaders in the front of mall bookstores, those overhyped best-sellers that pay the real estate for the mid-list books that fill up the back of the store.

I remember back in the day when I worked retail at an old fashioned camera store as it was undergoing a significant transition. I was a professional photographer. I sold serious equipment to serious shooters and hobbyists (and got an employee discount on my own gear!). I sold darkroom equipment and chemicals. This stuff did not exactly fly off the shelves. Was a time when that was considered OK in retail, like with old fashioned hardware stores too. Was a time when the credibility of one's stock and one's staff made one store better than another store. It was called competition.

But by the time I was in that world, gray market mail order camera equipment forced us to sell our most expensive cameras at cost, no mark-up. And the only thing filling up the till every night was film and print processing-- Photomat stuff. This was even before the day of the 1-hour mall photo place, although I later worked at those too.

So shelf space started shifting. The front of the store filled up with photo albums, frames, mats. Inventory of serious cameras declined. Darkroom equipment disappeared entirely, long before Photoshop was ever a gleam in Adobe's eye. I saw this as a sad day.

Now camera stores are full of inventory again, and the cameras are far more expensive than the film SLRs I used to sell. People I could not convince to spend any kind of money on a film camera are dropping three times that amount on digital cameras and related software and gear.

Assumptions. Sometimes I think everything is a judgment call, and imperatives are only imperatives because some "authority" with a checkbook just arbitrarily decides it is.

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

"Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen and others are suggesting things like the entire L.A. market can be adequately covered by 35 people tops, and that that somehow is a kind of 'new reality' of journalism, and we should just take this medicine and we should like it..."

This is a complete fantasy-- in fact a lie. In the particulars and the general impression. I never said it, I never proposed it, I don't believe it. It has nothing to do with me, and you better change it. You didn't bother to check it because you can't check it. It's false. It has no reality. Clear enough?

Jay, my apologies for the out of context association with those supporting the restructuring of the field of journalism into online-only or primarily online enterprises. My full quotation is here:

"Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen and others are suggesting things like the entire L.A. market can be adequately covered by 35 people tops, and that that somehow is a kind of "new reality" of journalism, and we should just take this medicine and we should like it, and not be utterly outraged at what it would mean for coverage.

When I invoke Jarvis and Rosen, I am not implying that they speak with identical voices, advocate the same things, or even advocate this specific thing. They are just the leading voices for this structural revisioning of journalism that to me seems like a lot of rationalization of things I can't stomach, especially in terms of its ramifications for what the public will get to know about the functioning of its biggest institutions. The disappearance of the already disappearing watchdog. That is my lament. I don't disagree that certain interactive structures and content distribution channels are changing drastically, and largely to get lagging old media in line with the new media forms."

Please note what I said: "When I invoke Jarvis and Rosen, I am not implying that they speak with identical voices, advocate the same things, or even advocate this specific thing. They are just the leading voices for this structural revisioning of journalism that to me seems like a lot of rationalization of things I can't stomach, especially in terms of its ramifications for what the public will get to know about the functioning of its biggest institutions."

I did not mean to imply you said such a specific thing, nor Jarvis. The subject has been bandied about, discussed in forums, and is part of the heated debate, which you and many others have waded into.

I will be happy to make note of your protest within the text of my post. I have followed your writing for many years, and commented on your blog. I am closely familiar with your positions, and your bold stance toward restructuring that you believe is necessary in the field, and agree with a great deal of it.

However, I tend to call out with more urgency the great losses the field is suffering in staffing, something I believe is being glossed over in all the embrace of interactivity. All the interactive forms in the world will not save us from the sheer loss of bodies, of reporter eyeballs in the field, something that remains devastating to me, and I believe will have far reaching and quite ugly ramifications, if the field survives at all.

Boese: [...] Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen and others are suggesting things like the entire L.A. market can be adequately covered by 35 people tops [...]

Rosen: I never expressed, suggested, or implied what you say I said.

Boese: [...] Please note what I said: "When I invoke Jarvis and Rosen, I am not implying that they speak with identical voices, advocate the same things, or even advocate this specific thing. They are just the leading voices for this structural revisioning of journalism that to me seems like a lot of rationalization of things I can't stomach, especially in terms of its ramifications for what the public will get to know about the functioning of its biggest institutions."I did not mean to imply you said such a specific thing, nor Jarvis. The subject has been bandied about, discussed in forums, and is part of the heated debate, which you and many others have waded into [...]

The context does not change what I just told you: I said what you wrote is a lie. Get it? I never said LA can be covered by 35 people. I never thought it. It's pure demagoguery-- engineered by you! I never suggested people should accept that proposition and get used to it. You aren't remembering something you heard from me, and you aren't paraphrasing anything I wrote.

If you feel something is being glossed over by certain people, fine. Call it out. Before you make me into an object of your disgust, and encourage other people to be equally disgusted, you better be clear about what I said. This is your fantasy. You need someone to represent a view you want to rage against. I am not going to be that person because it's not my view.

casuist, since I am Boese, I could reply, if you asked me, instead of posing your question to the world at large.

I am saying that Jarvis and Rosen are two figures playing point roles in calling for (each very different) types of restructuring in the field of journalism, along with many other people. Many are following the debates, many taking different positions, many quite heated, with one consistent factor: the field is going through an utter washout, right now.

Hence, the urgency and heatedness in many responses. We care deeply about this stuff. It matters. It will change the social fabric of our world.

Some take the position that the washout is a good thing, let's make hay with it. Some say, let's make lemonade from lemons. Some rage against it. Some fall somewhere inbetween.

Jay Rosen is someone I greatly admire for being on the leading edge of interactive forms of journalism, advocating for them, and for some of the structural changes they will bring.

Jeff Jarvis, on the other hand, while seeming to advocate for many of the same things as Rosen, I believe takes a much more extreme view on key factors, and I find it difficult to engage some of his more radical ideas.

Between those two, however, are many shades of gray which are part of the debate, far outside the Luddite reactionism of many in the traditional press, and that is a space I find most interesting in terms of interactivity.

BUT, none of that can be accomplished if there is a drastic attrition and destruction of the career of journalism by practicing, veteran, professional journalists. We need those people. We need them badly. I doubt that Rosen would disagree with me there at all. I think it is more my late night writing style that he primarily disagrees with, and for that, I do apologize.

I'm sorry to have written something you say mischaracterizes your position so strongly. I will happily remove you from that sentence altogether, for it was not (and never would be) my intention to claim you made that statement specifically, nor to claim that Jarvis made it specifically.

You say it is a lie to claim you said it. I did not claim you said it, nor would I ever intentionally lie. That is a strong reaction against my integrity which I will object to.

I do understand how online writers do feel the need to guard their positions carefully, even if they are not being literally quoted as saying something, and I am happy to change the text so that your name is not even mentioned in the same sentence as those words, and will only be referenced as a leading advocate for the (necessary) restructuring in the field.

Again, please accept my apologies for any distress this unintended association may have caused you.

It can't be done by 35 journalists. But it can be done by a mix of pro and semi-pro. We have real life examples. Do you know that 70 to 80% of the content of a local and regional newspaper in France is written by semi-pro? And that for 40 years. Details here:http://mediacafe.blogspot.com/2009/01/local-newsroom-1-70-to-80-of-french.html

By all means take me out of it. I don't want my name anywhere near the proposition you linked me to because I don't think you based it on anything I have said. Jeff Jarvis can speak for himself, but I don't think you're basing your suggestion on anything he said, either.

from four years ago attempting to warn people in the newspaper industry that there signs of profit-taking before letting the patient die. There you will find me observing that the things we would expect to see from an industry that is attempting to survive we are not seeing:

"No R & D rush. No large investment in the future. No siren call to find the new model. And yet the Project for Excellence in Journalism report says that in 2004, daily newspapers (the ones still making money) employed fewer reporters and editors. They also squeezed in more ads per page, and less news. Not only are we not seeing the big investment in an online alternative, there are signs of a withdrawal before the great divide.

"'There is more evidence than ever that the mainstream media are investing only cautiously in building new audiences,' the report states. 'That is true even online, where audiences are growing. Our data suggest that news organizations have imposed more cutbacks in their Internet operations than in their old media.'

"Getting it yet? Growing audiences, lower budgets. Pulling back when you should be stepping forward. The harvesting of the newspaper’s monopoly position has apparently begun. The assisted suicide is underway..."

That was in 2005. If you want to call that "advocating for a re-structuring," you may, but this isn't right, either. The re-structuring of the newspaper industry is something that is happening with or without our voices. I'm trying to point out what is happening--as I did in 2005--and point the way to what needs to be re-thought.

But I don't consider that a simple question. If someone asks me, what's the new business model for news? as people occasionally do, I am pretty consistent in telling them we don't know, this is a serious problem right now, no one has the answer. Certainly Sam Zell and Seth Godin don't.

Chris: I think you're right about the restructuring, but way off base in terms of where it came from. It certainly didn't come from Jay or Jeff; it came from Washington.

During the 90's, limits on how many papers, radio stations, and TV stations a single company could own were lifted. Capital flooded into the industry to create giant chains, which the investors then "flipped." (See http://bit.ly/dMXC).

People like Jay are just addressing the aftermath, and had nothing to do with the causes or the implementation of the restructuring, which are entirely driven by public policy and large investors. What each are doing, in the form of Daylife and OffTheBus, are engaging in small-scale experiments that might give us some insight into how to proceed. I don't think Jeff or Jay would claim that either of these experiments come anywhere close to providing a solution to the problem of replacing what's currently being destroyed in the vast simultaneous crackups of major US media institutions, and I've never heard them claim that.

What I have heard is a ton of other people claiming that they said it, though.

I also run a web/media experiment. Like Jay, people often attribute to me an optimism I don't have and never expressed about that aftermath simply because I come from the web side of the rapidly-dissolving border between the news industry and the high-tech industry.

I think the thought process goes like this: "She seems to be doing okay, so she must think it's going to work, right?"

Wrong. I have no idea if it's going to work, if by work we mean provide some civic utility and make enough money to give someone a regular paycheck and a dental plan.

One of the things I tell anyone who asks is that anybody who makes the jump from journalism to an entrepreneurial career is that they'll have to give up the pleasures of mastery and certainty. Being an entrepreneur means feeling stupid on a regular basis, with no one to blame but yourself.